How Trump Raised Questions With Anti-Christian Bias Initiative

Although not seen as particularly religious, US President Donald Trump has become more vocal about religion since surviving an assassination attempt in June 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

In his inaugural address on January 20, he also said that God had saved him from two assassination attempts so he could make America great again.

During the National Prayer Breakfast at the Capitol this month, Trump also commented on the assassination attempts, saying, “It changed something in me. I believed in God, but I feel much more strongly about it.”

Trump’s statements were not just idle talk; they were a clear message that Christianity is under attack, and that only he can protect it.

Many are asking why Trump's new task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias is needed when Christian conservatives have a strong grip on the levers of government.

While the Trump administration has highlighted anti-Christian bias, many see the most brutal crimes targeting other religious groups, yet they have received less political and media attention.

Religious Freedom

US President Donald Trump recently announced the creation of a task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias in government agencies, reflecting his intensification of his right-wing agenda since returning to power.

He said he has appointed Attorney General Pam Bondi to head the task force with the goal of ending the persecution of the majority Christian faith in the United States.

He added that Bondi’s mission will be to immediately stop all forms of targeting and discrimination against Christians in the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI, and other government agencies.

He also indicated that Bondi will pursue anti-Christian violence and vandalism in American society.

Trump recently stated, “We will protect Christians in our schools, in our military, in our government, in our workplaces, in our hospitals, and in our public squares.”

Later, he also created a White House Faith Office led by the pastor Paula White-Cain.

She has a long relation with Trump, having known each other for more than 20 years, and she considered her support for him part of her religious duty.

She is the first female pastor to pray at a presidential inauguration, having been chosen by Trump to deliver a prayer during his swearing-in for his first term.

She is known for her controversial religious views, while some have attacked her role in the White House, saying it conflicts with the separation of church and state.

For Trump, America is not only a political and economic powerhouse, but also a nation with a religious mission, which he sees as facing a threat to its spiritual identity.

Throughout his political career, Trump has emphasized that Christian values have been and remain the foundation of the United States’ prosperity, warning that a retreat from these principles will lead to the collapse of society.

In a related context, he believes that liberal institutions are trying to marginalize Christianity and exclude it from the public sphere, considering that there is a systematic campaign to weaken religious values and replace them with strict secularism.

For this reason, he has supported policies that guarantee greater freedom for religious institutions, allow more government funding for organizations based on Christian values, and enhance the role of religion in public education.

But this vision is not widely agreed upon. While his supporters see him as a leader waging a holy battle to restore America’s Christian identity, his opponents warn that his policies reflect an attempt to impose religious hegemony on a country based on religious pluralism.

While Trump talks about the persecution of Christians, FBI data reveals that Jews and Muslims are the most vulnerable to hate crimes.

In the past five years, Jews have been attacked four times more than Christians, with attacks on mosques and Muslim communities on the rise, while churches have remained relatively untouched.

Christian Faith

Critics say Trump’s executive order and his team have upended the traditional understanding of religious freedom, established by the First Amendment and reinforced by decades of laws and Supreme Court decisions, by targeting a specific religion.

“Rather than protecting religious beliefs, this task force will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination, and the subversion of our civil rights laws,” Rachel Laser, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said in a statement.

“In a majority Christian country, it’s a bit absurd to claim that there is widespread anti-Christian bias. When a majority begins to claim persecution, that is often a license for attacks on minorities,” said Matthew Taylor, Protestant scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore.

“It’s not the government’s job to endorse a particular denomination of Christianity, or give support or protection to any one faith,” said Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.

”The Christian conservative movement — a core Republican constituency — now has significant sway on the Supreme Court and in numerous states, Congress and the presidency. And still, they declare, we are victims,” said Bruce Ledewitz, a law professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.

The secular advocacy group Freedom From Religion Foundation questioned whether the task force to eradicate anti-Christian bias would just push a Christian nationalist agenda.

The Trump administration also includes several Christian hardliners who could play a major role in shaping the political future of the United States in the coming years, such as Vice President J.D. Vance, known for his strong Christian leanings and his defense of traditional family values in the country, as well as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has a cross tattoo on his chest dating back to the Crusades against Muslims in the Middle Ages.

On his part, Vance promised in a speech at the International Religious Freedom Summit held on February 4 and 5 that President Trump’s second administration will vigorously defend religious freedom, saying it already is expanding on the achievements of the first administration.

He said “Trump's first term was a new high water mark for religious Americans.”

“The first Trump administration took critical steps to protect the rights of the faithful, whether that was by rescuing pastors who were persecuted by foreign regimes or bringing relief to the Yazidis and Christians facing genocidal terror from ISIS,” he added. 

“Part of our protecting religious freedom initiatives means recognizing, in our foreign policy, the difference between regimes that respect religious freedom and those that do not,” he said. 

Biblical Prophecy

Since his inauguration on January 20, Trump has unveiled a series of executive orders that advance his conservative agenda, including several targeting diversity and transgender people.

While his relationship with the church has faced difficulties that have alienated some conservative Christians, such as sexual assault allegations and court cases related to his relationship with a porn star, he has maintained electoral support from white evangelical Christians, who form a strong constituency.

Trump’s stance on religion has also long raised questions about how much he relies on the support of American evangelicals, a large segment of whom believe that his rise to power represents the fulfillment of biblical prophecy.

However, he is not known to be a practicing religious person, and in a 2015 interview he was unable to cite a single Bible verse he had memorized.

During his campaign last year, Trump promoted a Bible called ‘God Bless The USA’, priced at $60.

The move sparked a wave of ridicule on American television and social media, while pastors expressed their displeasure at the move. Pastor Lauren Livingston described it as blasphemous, noting that the Bible is for Christ, not for the U.S.

Nevertheless, the book found its way to the public, making $300,000 last summer, coinciding with Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt during one of his campaign trips.

Trump's interest in highlighting the Christian element in his campaign and in his speech clearly contributed to his eventual victory in winning about 80% of the votes of white evangelicals, in addition to a large majority of white Protestants and white Catholics during the last election.

Several American newspapers have recently intensively discussed the question of how President Trump's Christian orientation will affect the nature of the United States, while many of them warned that this could threaten the country's liberal gains and secular system.

In turn, political researcher Mohamed Naeem told Al-Estiklal that “what Trump is doing is not just religious sentiments, but rather a betrayal and exploitation of the Christian religion in order to achieve electoral gains and justify inhumane policies.”

He also pointed out that Trump was not known before entering the political arena as a religious person at all, as his personality that American society knew contradicted many apparent Christian values.

“Therefore, Trump presented himself to the Christian community as a man who commits sins, but he is part of God’s plan to save the U.S. and return it to its correct Western Christian path, and thus he began to be promoted,” he said.

Mr. Naeem concluded that “it is certain that this Christian tide in American politics will be coupled with broad transformations in the short and long term.”